


Hale House for Wayward Wolves

by iisrafel



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Derek is basically Pack Dad, Future Fic, Gen, POV Original Character, Pack Dynamics, Post Rehab Derek, Rebuilding the Hale House, Werewolf Culture, Werewolf mythos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-01-04 07:53:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iisrafel/pseuds/iisrafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pack Hale was the strongest pack in the west before the accident. Petra never told them what actually happened, only that the pack was no more. “I met them once,” she says. “I was a wolf, though.”</p><p>“They lived here. I lived here.”</p><p>Brian sucks in air so hard it makes a croaking noise in his throat. “No fucking way! You’re Derek Hale!”</p><p>Derek rolls his eyes and nods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act I - Meeting

 

 

“In the dark there is a monster and his heart is filled with hate.”

...

 

_It was an accident._

Her brother’s amber eyes blink wearily at her. His lip is curled up in a pained snarl.  A jagged gash stretches up his side and when he breathes, she can hear it rattle around in his lungs; his heart is beating so fast –

_I didn’t mean to lead it here._

“S-Sophie?” he whispers, hands tangling in her soft undercoat. “Is it gone?”

She growls at him in warning, because while the monster isn’t near them, it’s still in the house. She presses him further into the closet. She takes some of his pain. His arms wrap around her neck.

_I thought it lost my trail._

She can hear the struggle upstairs. Her father and her Alpha are struggling to fight off the monster. There is a loud crash that rattles the walls of the house. Thumps echo down the stairs. The closet is wrenched open. A howl resounds from above, painful and broken. It is cut off with a snap.

“Quickly! Come!” Their mother is hurt. Glass shards stick out from her shoulder. “Sebastian! Now!” She yanks on her brother’s arm.

“Is it gone?” he repeats, looking up at the ceiling like he’s trying to hear. “Where is Petra?”

Their mother’s eyes flash red. For her, it is a new color. “Just run, Seb, as fast as you can,” and she pushes him toward the front door, once stained glass, now broken shards.

Sophie moves to follow. Claws sink into her shoulder and she crumples, whining, baring her throat.

“Not you,” her mother growls, frustration and anger and pain heavy in her voice. “It’s your fault that thing even found it’s way here. How could - You are not _one of us._ ”

Glass breaks overhead. A body hit’s the ground outside.

_I’m  sorry._

Her mother jerks away from her, clutching her chest. Pain laces through the Alpha link. “Giovanni!” she gasps.

Sophie knows immediately that her father is dead.

The monster screams and her mother joins in.

Sophie tries to follow her when she runs out the door, but the pain in her shoulder is too much.  She loses the trail before she can catch up, before she can find what’s left of her pack.

_I’m so sorry._

 

 

_..._

She hasn’t been able to shift back for three months now. She’d tried many times only to get stuck halfway though with fur along her arms and claws and fangs piercing her lips. After the first month she gave up altogether.

She’s been a wolf for longer than three months before. She’s spent whole years in the form. But this is different. This is not because her alpha commands it; it’s because she physically cannot shift. Her anchor is gone. The tie to her human self has been severed. It may never be repaired.

It’s winter. Any hopes she had of finding the remnants of her pack are covered by snow.

Survival is lonely, though. She is too human to find a wolf pack and too lupine to find a small town. She decides it is best to become an omega. There’s no point in being human anymore. If she is a wolf she can survive. She explores the north.

 

 

 

 ...

 

She is in Montana now. She’s been a wolf for two years when she comes upon the hunter. Not a hunter of the supernatural, she can tell by the line of his shoulders and the curve of his back that his man doesn’t know the horrors of that life. She knows what hunters smell like, what they look like. She had gotten careless a few months ago in Nebraska and two brothers nearly caught her. She remembers the stench on them. This man doesn’t smell like death and travel.

In fact he smells like home. Like family.

Her heart twists painfully in her chest.

He only has one gun she can see from her position. He probably has a knife somewhere in the folds of his coat.

It’s late February. Snow still falls weekly.

The hunter is kneeling in front of a large elk. She smells adrenaline on him.

Hunger claws at her stomach and she growls.

The hunter jerks up immediately and looks right at her, which is odd because she is hidden in the brush and the snow.

He does not reach into the folds of his coat for a knife. He does not blindly grope for his gun that lies forgotten, propped on the elk’s stomach.

He growls. He pulls off his gloves and his nails become sharp claws.

He is a Faolcúan.  

“Come out, now!” he says, Alpha power lacing through his voice.

It surges through her veins, the want and the need to obey him, but she locks her joints and refuses to move. 

His eyes flash red. “I said ‘come out’!” he shouts.

This time the pull is too strong. She jumps out of the brush and snarls at him. She has been alone to long, been a wolf too long, for this kind of chance, for him to be _real_.

He looks afraid when he finally sees her. Like he wasn’t expecting an animal, and to his credit, he probably wasn’t.

“You’re a wolf?” he asks. She understands what he means.

Of course she is. She barks once in confirmation. She doesn’t bother trying to shift.

“This is Johnson territory,” he says, eyes shifting to his gun. She’s never heard of that pack before. When she remains silent his face shifts to one of understanding.  “You’re an Omega, huh?” His voice is kind. “How long you been out here?”

She says nothing because she can’t. For the first time in a long time she wants to talk. She wants arms and legs and fingers. She wants to take a shower. Eat cooked food. She whines, hunches her shoulders.

The hunter sighs. “You wouldn’t be the first feral we’ve had. Come on, camp’s not far.”

He leads her to a small clearing about three miles away. It’s packed with tents and the smell of den is thick in the air. So is cooked meat and she whines again.

The hunter, his name is Gabriel, laughs at her before calling out: “Claire, Ben! We’ve got a guest!”

Gabriel told her about the camp on the way. It is for wolves like her. A sanctuary among the mountains, away from people, from hunters, from abusive pack, for any wolf who finds it. She remembers Petra telling her brother stories of the refugee camps that lay scattered around the world.

Claire is Gabriel’s wife and Ben is his son and they are the only members of Pack Johnson. The others in the camp (there are only two, now, last week there were five) are like Sophie, packless and alone, except for the man that Gabriel calls Strider.

“Strider showed up fall of last year. He’s been helping us function. We had some cubs around then that couldn’t control the shift. He helped ‘em, maybe he’ll help you, too,” he had said.

Ben is young, maybe six years old, and it doesn’t faze him that she is a wolf. He runs straight to her and despite her warning growl, clambers onto her back and howls before burying his face into her fur. She squirms until he falls off. She is dirty. He is just a child, like Seb.

Claire sets down a plate of meat without anything being said. Sophie cannot contain her hunger.

“She’s wolfing it down!” Ben says and she growls at him again. Gabriel laughs.

“Strider come back from his hunt yet?” he asks. “He and Levi have been out since yesterday.”

“No,” Claire says. Sophie smells the worry rolling off of her. “I’m afraid something’s happened.”

Gabriel swings Ben up into his arms, “Nothing’s happened, right buddy?”

“Right!” Ben crows.

 

 

 

...

 

Three days later, she is well fed and warm and when she wanders away from the camp she can smell traces of den lingering on her fur. It is almost like having a pack again.

She is lying near the fire, watching Claire cook and allowing Ben to play with her tail, when a howl cuts through the trees.

Gabriel is up and gone before she can blink and, without thinking, she follows him. They run through the woods for about a mile until they come upon them.

“Strider!” Gabriel says, but there’s a sharpness to his voice that isn’t normally there. The smell of blood stings her nose.

“I’m fine,” the taller man grumbles, and he shifts his weight to better support the other man who must be Levi. “There was something, it attacked. Didn’t want to lead it back.”

Gabriel takes Levi from Strider. Levi is young, but still older than her. He groans and mumbles something about his side.

There is a creak a few yards away, like someone running through the forest, and they all freeze. Sophie catches the smell of rotting meat and decay and it’s painfully familiar. Images of her pack flash suddenly in her mind and it makes her dizzy. She whines low.

Strider eyes her warily. “A feral?” he asks.

Gabriel nods. “Lets get back to camp.”

 

 

 

... 

 

Strider sits next to her when dinner is ready. He has dark hair and a dark beard and heavy brows. His features are very sharp and he looks strong, but despite this there is softness to him. His eyes are not cold and he offers Ben smiles and quiet laughs when the child starts telling him of what has happened while he was away.

Strider is also not an Omega. He smells distinctly of pack that is not Johnson, but more importantly it is a smell Sophie has encountered before. She tries to catch more of his smell without him noticing, but he is sitting right next to her and he is a Faolcúan and the second she breathes in deep he glances at her and lifts his eyebrows.

“Like something you smell?” he asks, and she jerks her head back. If she weren’t covered in fur, she’d be flushed pink. His voice is much softer than she expected.

He laughs again, quietly and his hand settles in between her shoulder blades. His fingers card through her fur.

Claire tells Strider he missed a phone call while he was away.

Sophie is too caught up in how everything suddenly seems _right_.

Something settles in her bones.

 

 

 

... 

 

All he does is ask her what her name is.

It’s midday, the sun is bright overhead, and the chill of March is barely present. Claire is mending a blanket. Ben is chasing a squirrel. Levi left a week ago and Gabriel is on a hunt. Strider is sitting across the fire from her.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“Sophia,” she says.

It’s his slight smile that makes her realize exactly what has happened, that she has spoken with her own mouth, with teeth that are not sharp. She brings her hands up to her face. She marvels at her fingers. She cries.

Claire is just as excited. She throws the blanket around her shoulders and practically dives into her tent for clothes. “Gabe’s not gonna believe this!” she exclaims, happiness easily heard.

“How did you do that?” she asks. Surely this is all a dream.

Strider shrugs. His eyebrows do the thing they always do when he’s trying to be mysterious. “Learned it from a friend.”

Sophie, though, is not in the mood. She has been a wolf far too long for this kind of miracle. She should be struggling to find words. It should be hard to speak. She should still feel the animal instincts instead of purely human ones. “What did you do?” she growls.

“I believed in you,” he says. “I believe in you.”

A warmth she has never felt before blooms in her chest.

 

 

 

...

 

Two months later, Sophie wakes up to find Strider gone. Horror knots in her stomach. Her throat tightens. She feels like she’s going to be sick.

She feels the wolf inside her, it’s been so controlled the past few weeks, clawing at her resolve. She can feel it taking over.

“Where did he go?” she asks Gabriel. Her voice comes out raw and disused, like it should have been when she first shifted back.

Gabriel knows what’s happening. “Calm down, it’s okay.” He holds her shoulders steady. “Sophie, it’s okay.”

But it isn’t. She is falling apart with out him. “Where _is he?_ ” Her voice breaks. Her vision shifts, her teeth move in her skull.

“He went home, Sophie,” he says. “Back to his pack.”

“ _Where?”_ she repeats before fur ripples out from her skin and she drops to all fours. The ‘ _how could he’_ remains unspoken.

“Beacon Hills.” Gabriel sighs. His hands still rest on her shoulders. “California. I know he was kind to you, Sophie, but Strider’s not an Alpha, and they might not let you join.”

Sophie howls. She can’t think straight. She needs him. She needs pack. Family. Not a make shift camp in the mountains.

She breathes in deep, catches the smell and tears after it before Gabriel can stop her.

 

 

 

...

 

His trail weakens when she enters Missoula. She panics and nearly gets run over when the scent vanishes completely.

She picks it back up near a restaurant and follows it to a grimy motel about a mile away. His scent mingles with another Faolcúan. He is with someone. She doesn’t bother to find his room, and simply sits in the parking lot and howls as loud as she can, which in retrospect isn’t the smartest thing to do.

Strider yanks open the door of room 124, blue eyes blazing, with a look caught somewhere in between panic and awe. She races across the lot and tackles him back into the room. He kicks the door closed as he falls. She barely takes notice of the other man that sits up suddenly from one of the beds.

“The fuck!” he says.

“Godammit, Sophie!” Strider gasps, because all her weight is pressing into his lungs.

She snarls at him, though, a growl resonating from deep in her being. He blinks in surprise before growling back. She tries to shift, so she can tell him how angry she is, how horrified she was when he left, but she can’t. Her wolf is raging and it won’t stop.

 “Sophie,” he says, and there’s power behind his voice. It’s not quite like Alpha power; it’s not even like the power some Betas have. It’s something else entirely and it’s _strong_. “Why aren’t you with your pack?”

“She’s one of us? Shit, man, where’d you pick up a feral?” the other man asks.

She whines at that. _The Johnsons are not_ my _pack. I am_ not _feral._

Strider looks like he’s about to say something else, his eyebrows are knit together and he looks kind of pained, but nothing comes out.

 _You’re my pack._ She wants to say it. She whines again and presses her muzzle to his neck.

He groans. “Sophie, please get off.”

She shakes her head. He’ll make her leave. He’ll make her go back to the mountains and the cold.

“Sophie,” he repeats and he still sounds aggravated, but this time there’s something that almost sounds fond in the way he says her name. “It wasn’t easy to leave, you know.” Warmth curls in her stomach. If she could, she would smile. “You’re heavy, you know that?” He keeps talking. She can hear the smile in his voice, smell _family_ when she breathes. “Come on, at least shift.”

“It won’t make me any less heavy, Strider,” she mumbles, nose still pressed against his neck. His hands are big and warm on her back.

He laughs. She feels the puff of air skate across the top of her head. “My name’s Derek,” he says.

“That means leader,” she responds, because it’s the only thing she can think to say. He doesn’t like that. She feels him tense for a moment before he laughs again. It seems forced. The man shifts on the bed. He smells confused.

“If you’re gonna come home with me, we’ve gotta get you some clothes.”

She scrambles off of him and shifts to a wolf in three seconds flat.

“Awe, man, come on!” says the man on the bed. “She was cute! Now she’s all snarly.”

Derek growls at him and turns back to her. “That’s Brian. Ignore him.”

“Hey!”

Sophie snaps at the both of them. She does not like being a wolf. She never has, and now that she’s her with Strider – Derek – again, she wants to spend every moment she can as an actual human.

Derek must understand her, somehow. He stretches up to the bed closest to the window and pulls the black duffle bag that rests there to the floor. He rummages for a moment before pulling out a flannel shirt and tossing it at her. He turns to Brian. “You’re more her size –“

“You callin’ me a girl, Alpha Man?” Brian’s voice is rough, like he smokes, or has just downed a whole bottle of whiskey.

Derek’s eyebrows rise exponentially. “Give her some pants.”

Brian makes a face, as if having to do something will kill him but reaches for his bag anyway.

Sophie noses at the shirt Derek has supplied for her. The smell of him is overwhelming. She is not quite sure he understands how important he is to her, if he knows how secure the simple gesture is making her feel.

It is pretty ridiculous, she knows. She has not known him long, not even three months. She doesn’t remember feeling like this with her own pack, and yet, here she is, ready and willing to give up her life for a perfect stranger. 

Derek startles her back to the present by shoving a towel in her face. His own is twisted into a slight scowl and that has her worried.

“You need a shower,” he says. And then he helps her to the bathroom and turns on the water, kind and gentle, and she wonders why he suddenly looks angry.

She is overjoyed at the prospect of being clean again. It is relief to watch muddied water float down the drain.

When she emerges, wearing Derek’s shirt that smells like him and home and family, Brian openly gapes at her. Derek still wears his scowl.

“Dude, I could have sworn she was a brunette!” he exclaims.

Derek shoves a pillow in his face and pulls her to the bed.

For the first time in a year and a half, her sleep is peaceful and dreamless.

 

 

 

...

 

Brian decides to tell her his life story as they journey to Beacon Hills. They stick to the mountains, but venture near cities and out lying gas stations for food and rest. It’s rather slow going, compared to what she is used to, but traveling with others is much better than traveling alone.

 

(“Derek has a car but he’s a douche so when he decided to travel North America, he didn’t think to do it in a car.”

“I wasn’t originally picking up passengers.”)

Brian was born in Maine. Sophie is not sure where Maine is, and when she voiced it, he laughed until Derek punched him.

In fact, that’s how they met. In Las Vegas. Derek punched him.

 

(“No, I distinctly remember punching you after you called me out for not being an Alpha.”

“To be honest, man, that whole week is a blur. And you seem like a punch first, talk later kinda guy.”)

Brian had been involved in some sort of underground gambling fight club. Derek was ‘going on a quest to find redemption and subsequent resurrection for past crimes’. Their paths crossed.

“When he told me of his duty, I had to join!” Brian says, gestating wildly. Derek looks as though he has a headache.

“That’s a beautiful story,” Sophie says.

Brian grins widely. “Thanks, Sophie. I try.”

“I’m not the saint you make me out to be. My motives are selfish. You make it sound like I’m on a mission from God,” Derek growls. His face is twisted into the almost snarl again and the tips of his ears are pink.

“You are! What about the hunter slash pack relations in Nashville? The Omega in Memphis? The camp in Lawrence? Or the one in Omaha? Sioux Falls? Man, hunters were all over that like white on rice until you stepped in as negotiation king! What about the pack outside of Missoula? You saved those cubs lives! You help people! How could you not think that what your doing isn’t righteously ordained, you Righteous Man, you!” Brian’s words come with teasing lilts and emphasis that does not go to keep the confrontations serious, but his heart does not falter. Brian must truly see something in Derek.

Sophie thinks she may see it, too.

 

 

 

... 

 

They stop at a motel a few days later. They are almost at Beacon hills, maybe two more days of easy travel. They only decided on a motel because Brian had been complaining about how you can only get so clean with a water bottle and a creek. Also the forest is nice, but summer is well on it’s way and the smell of heat can only be pleasant for so long.

Derek had even asked Sophie, as apparently Derek’s pack works by way of vote, but Brian had pinned her with a pointed glare until she sheepishly said it would be nice to sleep in a bed.

Brian is asleep and snoring on the other bed and Derek is in the shower. Sophie is curled in another of his shirts and tangled in the sheets. The streetlight filters in through the gap in the curtains where they aren’t quite long enough to meet in the middle.

The faucet squeaks as it turns off.

Sophie isn’t used to hearing everything. It’s different, living alone and in the wild. Sure there’s noise, but it’s ambience and static. It’s strange to hear the couple talking two doors down, the TV crackle behind the receptionist’s desk, the rustle of a towel pulled over skin.

Sometimes it is a bit too much. Sometimes she hears so much that she cant listen to anything at all.

Derek slips out of the bathroom and turns the light off before it can wake Brian. He climbs into the bed and huffs out a laugh when he realizes there’s not enough cover for the both of them.

“You gotta share, Soph,” he grumbles, tugging on the blankets.

Sophie feels awkward. He’s upset about something, has been since she followed him to Missoula. “Do you not want me here?” she asks, ignoring the hollow feeling that voicing her fear creates in her chest.

Derek is quick to denounce. “No!” he whispers, “No, ‘course not, you’re fine.”

“But you’re upset.”

He sighs and runs his hand down his face. His teeth grind in his skull. “You lost control when I left,” he says.

 _Oh._ Sophie blushes in the dark. “You’re not my anchor,” she breathes a little too quickly.

“Uh, huh. Then what is it?” His voice is unsteady. She wonders why. “Because I’m not… I cant…”

“Family,” she saves him from finishing. “My anchor is family. Same as all like me.”

Derek frowns. The streak of lamplight makes his face look even more intimidating than usual. “All like you?”

“Faolkyst.”

He looks at her out of the corners of his eyes. “My mom was Faolkyst. Her anchor was her children.”

Sophie nods. “Family.”

“But I’m not your family, Sophie.” Derek sounds like he’s in pain, like the conversation is burning him inside out. She doesn’t really want to talk about this anymore, herself.

“You feel like it, I think.”

“You ‘think’? How do you not know what family feels like?” Derek looks at her with a startled face. She doesn’t like that face on him.

Brian rolls over and groans. He flashes amber eyes for show. “Oh, my GOD. Shut up and go to sleep. Jesus.”

 

 

 

... 

 

Beacon Hills is not a small town, but it’s not big either. There aren’t a lot off people, per say and the whole town butts up to a preserve that’s perfect for moonlight runs. They pass the police station and stop by a veterinarian’s office before Derek leads them to an apartment building.

Derek’s apartment is on the third floor and his door slides open on a wheeled runner with a heavy clang.

“This looks like a haunted warehouse,” Brian says, one eyebrow lifted in uncertainty. “I followed you for this.” He walks inside anyway, unceremoniously flinging his backpack to the floor.

Derek laughs. “If only you knew what I lived in before.”

Brian gags as he collapses on the couch. Dust pillows up. “No. Nope. I’m good.” He bats the dust away.

Sophie giggles.

Derek’s apartment is dirty and barely furnished. Light leaks in through giant dirt-streaked windows and it casts the whole space in a muddy glow. 

“There’s a bed up the stairs,” Derek says as he shrugs his backpack off. “The couch isn’t so bad, though.”

“Those stairs don’t look safe,” Sophie eyes the offending spiral staircase suspiciously. The metal frame is pulling from the concrete wall. Derek laughs again.

“What now, boss man? What’s gonna happen in Beacon Hills?” Brian asks.

Derek walks to the giant windows and peers outside before he turns and answers. “Did you ever hear of Pack Hale?”

Brian sits up quickly. “Heard of them? Shit man, the Hales were legends!”

Sophie remembers them. She met them once, when her pack had been roaming for territory. The whole family was kind, though the sisters a little crazy. Pack Hale was the strongest pack in the west before the accident. Petra never told them what actually happened, only that the pack was no more. “I met them once,” she says. “I was a wolf, though.”

“They lived here. I lived here.”

Brian sucks in air so hard it makes a croaking noise in his throat. “No fucking way! You’re Derek Hale!”

Derek rolls his eyes and nods. “Yeah. So you know what happened to my home.”

“Yeah!” Brian nods enthusiastically. “Psycho hunters. Big fire. The biggest upheaval in werewolf society since Salem.”

Derek glares at him, but gestures out the window. “You can almost see it from here. My house.”

Brian hops over the couch and trips in his hurry to get to the window. When Sophie gets close enough, Derek takes her hand. He points to where the preserve begins. The land slopes up on a mountain, trees stretch out for miles. In the midst of deep greens and browns there’s a stretch of black, a mar on the surface of the forest, like someone working with charcoal forgot it was on their fingers and didn’t bother fixing their mistake. “There,” Derek says.

Brian purses his lips. “Yeah, so? What are we gonna do?”

“Rebuild it.”

Sophie wipes dirt from the window to get a clearer view. “We’re gonna rebuild your house?”

Derek smiles, real and warm and genuine, and wraps his arms around both of their shoulders. “No. We’re gonna build a home.”

Brian snorts. “Dude, you’re so cheesy.”


	2. Act II - Rebuilding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles turns to her like he’s not surprised she practically sprinted into the kitchen. “How do you like your eggs?” he asks. 
> 
> “What?”
> 
> Brian clears his throat and folds the newspaper shut. “Just scramble them.”
> 
> Stiles looks offended. “I asked Sophie, not you. You've already eaten!”
> 
> “You can scramble them,” Sophie says, even though she’s not quite sure what that means.
> 
>  
> 
> Or,
> 
> In which there are a lot of 'first times'.

"Our torments may, in length of time, become our elements."

...

 

Sophie can understand why someone would be nervous when they are about to meet their possible new Alpha. She remembers when Petra brought Arthur, her mate, home for the first time. Even though he was human, he would be marrying into the role of leader. Everyone had been tense that day. She remembers her mother pulling her brother aside and telling him, “Don’t be harsh on the man, Sebastian, no one is born an Alpha, but it must be in them to learn.”  

Sophie, herself, is nervous. She can feel her stomach twisting into knots. The hem of her (Derek’s) shirt is now wrinkled beyond hope from her constant wringing.

But Brian is vibrating in the passenger seat. He keeps changing the radio station halfway through songs and organizing Derek’s cd collection –

 

 

(“Dude, really?”

“They were Laura’s.”

“I’m just surprised you don’t have a box of cassettes.”)

– first alphabetically, and then by color. He’s almost finished ordering them by genre when Derek grabs his hand tight enough to crack bones and growls, “Enough.”

“Sorry!” Brian yelps. “Sorry! Jesus.”

“We haven’t even been in the car ten minutes,” Derek frowns, tightening his hands on the steering wheel. He looks at Sophie in the rear view mirror. “Your heart’s racing.”

“We’re Omegas, Derek.” Brian runs both his hands through his short crop of hair before he pulls his face down to his knees. He smells sour and stale with anxiousness and lack of sleep. “And we’re just gonna waltz in and meet your Alpha? ‘Hey, we’re part of your pack now, don’t kill us!’”

“You have nothing to worry about with Scott,” Derek says for the fiftieth time. “He-“

“’Never even wanted to be and Alpha and’ oh, shit,” Brian’s voice cracks when Derek turns onto an old dirt driveway. “This is such a bad idea. We can’t even turn around they’ve definitely heard us. It’s nice your car is this gray color; this dust would look terrible on a black car.”

Derek is grinding his teeth in annoyance. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel. “You’re worse than Stiles.”

Sophie jumps in before Brian can speak. “You’ve mentioned him before. Is he the first Beta?” It’s a desperate attempt to change the subject.

Derek seems relieved to ignore Brian’s chatter. “No, that’s Isaac. Stiles is human.”

“Humans can be first Betas!” Brian quips. And then his heart stutters. Sophie can hear his nails press into the leather of the seat. “We’ve stopped.”

Sophie and Brian peer out of the windshield. The Hale house stands before them, half burnt and falling apart. Walls with pale siding extend up to charred and blackened edges. The front door is marred with scratches in the red paint. Windows are broken or absent altogether. Some of the walls of the second floor have fallen away.

But for all the decay and neglect, it’s still a beautiful sight. Sunlight is bright on the mossed over brick of the chimney and the charcoaled wood glints silver. There are vines that have grown up all around, and have intertwined themselves with the structure of the house itself.

“Yes,” Derek pushes his door open. “Now come on.”

Sophie is about to slip out of the Toyota herself when Brian suddenly lunges across the car and pulls Derek back in. He hits his head on the doorframe and growls loudly.

“Just wait a minute!” Brian cries, scrambling to keep hold of Derek. “If Scott didn’t want to be the Alpha so bad why didn’t you just take it from him?”

Derek glares and with a voice very much like Sophie’s father says, “You are going to meet him, Brian. Get out of the car.” His words hang heavy in the air for a few seconds. Brian’s hand even drifts to the handle, but –

“You’re not my Alpha,” Brian says defiantly.

“Brian –“

“But you could be!”

Sophie reaches around his seat and grabs his shoulder. “Let’s just go meet Scott.”

Brian bats her away. “No, see, we don’t have to! We can make our own-“

Derek grabs him by his collar and jerks him forward. “I will not be your Alpha,” he snarls. His face contorts into barely contained rage, a rage that’s completely human. Anger rolls off of him in waves, palpable and thick in the air. It makes Sophie’s stomach turn. It’s enough to make Brian pause.

When Brian speaks again his voice is small and trembling. “But you’d be a good one.”

“No,” Derek rumbles, voice heavy and deep enough to be felt in their bones. His eyes flicker blue for an instant and his face starts to shift. He catches himself, though, and pushes Brian away quickly and buries his face in his hands and breathes deep. “No, I wasn’t,” he says quietly.

Footsteps creak along the old porch and all three look up to see a tall boy with blond curls watching them. He wears an expression caught somewhere between amusement and concern. “Everything okay?” he calls, shoving his hands into his pockets.

Derek breaths out a sigh of what could only be relief. “Yeah,” he only lifts his voice a little, “Yeah, Isaac.” And then he levels Brian will a stern look. “Out. Now.”

It’s almost as if nothing has happened.

Brian heaves a sigh like it’s his last and gets out of the car in a way that looks like it takes too much energy, but bounds up to Isaac anyway, holding out his hand.

“I’m gonna kill him,” Derek says, though there is fondness in his voice, looking back to Sophie. “Are you ready?”

Sophie nods and fumbles with the door handle in her hurried attempt to finally get out of the vehicle. Isaac is still standing on the porch, but Brian is already inside. She meets Derek at the front and shies away from him when he reaches out to her.

He looks pained. “I’m-”

“It’s okay,” she says. She knows he hears her heart. She knows it stuttered when he reached out. “You just reminded me of someone.”

Derek moves closer to her again. This time she meets him halfway. “Do you want to tell Scott that you’re a Faolkyst?”

Sophie thinks about Petra. About life with her pack before. “Do I have to?”

Derek laughs quietly, like he knew before he asked. “No. But it will probably come up at some point. You’ll have to shift eventually.”

“I hope not.”

They’ve made it to the porch, now, hand in hand.

Isaac lifts his eyebrows. “How’d I know you’d be comin’ back with strays?” he says, easy smile on his face and in his voice.

Derek rolls his eyes. “Nice to see you, too. You’ve already met Brian, so this -” He pushes her forward a few steps and she almost steps back just to spite him. “This is Sophia. Sophie, Isaac.”

Isaac smiles at her, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Hi.” He looks to Derek for a second and she only barely catches the flash of wariness.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she makes herself say. She can feel the pinprick of the shift running down her spine. Her bones move in her hands. When she was with her old pack, being a wolf was defensive precaution. Old habits must not change.

Derek presses his hand to the small of her back. The urge to shift that’s thrumming through her veins screeches to a halt.

“Scott inside?”

Isaac nods and opens the door for them. “

You’ll be fine,” Derek whispers so quietly she can barely hear it.

 

 

...

 

Pack Hale (not McCall, even though that's Scott's name) usually has seven members. They are, Scott, Isaac and Derek ‘the wolves’ and Melissa, John, Stiles and Lydia ‘the humans’. Usually, because they really only became a pack after an incident in their sophomore year involving Deucalion. (Petra refused him passage on her territory once and it ended bloody. According to Stiles, this incident was also quite bloody.) Usually because there are twins, Ethan and Aiden, that occasionally crash in Beacon Hills. They are not here now.

There are also Hunters in Beacon Hills: the Argents. Sophie has never heard of them before, but according to Scott, she doesn’t need to worry about them.

 

(“They don’t hunt werewolves anymore. They only protect now.”)

Sophie doesn’t think she would have worried about them anyway. Hunter families specialize in a creature that wronged them in the past and go for their kills in groups. They stay put. There was such a family near her old home.

It is the Hunters that roam around that are truly dangerous – the ones that do not look for guilt, but for species.

What is most surprising about Pack McCall, though, in the midst of their ties with Hunters and their wolf to human ratio, is that they are not family.

Even Brian seemed a bit confused.

“You’re not related,” he had said, almost accusatory.

Scott had smiled. “Nope.”

And that had been enough. Brian wasn’t even upset that his Alpha is now a nineteen-year-old boy.

It’s not until they are back in the safety and quiet of Derek’s apartment that Sophie says, rather dully:

“You are not family.”

Derek looks up from his computer, frown on his face.

A bowl clatters and Brian snorts in the kitchen. “Don’t sound so offended, wolf girl.”

Derek seems a little more concerned, but he doesn’t say anything. “

But you are,” she restarts. “Family. You are family.” She doesn’t quite know how to say it, how to put into words what she’s feeling in the pit of her stomach, what she smells when she breathes deep, or even what she saw when she watched Pack McCall. They are not family, but not by blood. There is nothing that ties them together at all but they’re closer than her pack had ever been.

She doesn’t understand. Her pack had been bound together, by blood, for generations, been on the same territory for almost a century. Pack McCall has only been around for two years. It shouldn’t smell more like pack. It shouldn’t already be stronger.

Derek is still frowning. “You’ve had a long day, Soph,” he says. “You should go to bed.”

Sophie doesn’t really want to, but she does anyway. She doesn’t like to see him make that face.

 

 

...

 

She wakes to the smell of meat and salt and grease and her stomach growls violently. Sophie’s never smelled quite this combination, but whatever it is smells like heaven and she feels like she hasn’t eaten in days.She jumps down the staircase and slides into the kitchen to see Stiles in front of the stove and Brian sitting at the counter reading a newspaper.

Stiles turns to her like he’s not surprised she practically sprinted into the kitchen. “How do you like your eggs?” he asks.

“What?”

Brian clears his throat and folds the newspaper shut. “Just scramble them.”

Stiles looks offended. “I asked Sophie, not you. You’ve already eaten!”

“You can scramble them,” Sophie says, even though she’s not quite sure what that means.

Stiles turns his offended look to her. “Are you just saying that because he said that or are you saying that because you want scrambled eggs? Because I can cook an egg however you want. I trained for this. I am prepared.”

Brian snickers. “She doesn’t even fuckin’ know what you’re talking about, Stilinski.”

Stiles looks appalled as he moves the thin strips of meat in the pan. Sophie would honestly forego eggs entirely just to have whatever is in that pan. “Why would she not know about eggs?”

Brian looks at her silently out of the corners of his eyes. He must sense her hunger, because he plucks a plate from Stiles’ hand and grabs a handful of meat from the pan, wincing as he does so.

Stiles squawks and tries to slap his hand away, but it’s no use. “What are you-”

“Here you go, wolf girl,” Brian ignores him, “Have some bacon. Bet you didn’t have this in the woods.”

She shakes her head, and shovels some ‘bacon’ into her mouth. “No,” she says around it. “What does it come from?”

“Pig.”

“I like it."

"Everyone likes it." He ruffles her hair and pulls her closer. "Help me pick a job."

“Out of the newspaper?” 

“Want ads,” Stiles clarifies. He picks up the now bacon-less pan and waves his free hand across it. Faintly, Sophie hears a kind of crackle in the air, but it’s over quickly. When he puts it down, the pan is clean. “Brian is deciding to be helpful.”

Brian huffs and rests his chin on Sophie’s shoulder. “There’s a maintenance position open at that motel we saw coming in,” he says. “And a janitor spot is open in the high school.”

“The motel,” Stiles says immediately, not even looking up from his cooking. “That way we can keep tabs on who comes in town.”

Sophie feels a faint growl rumble through Brian’s chest so she grabs his hand. “Because,” he says, “Monsters of the week are gonna check into Beacon Hills’ finest lodging for the continental. And this isn’t even to secure your town. I just need a job.”

Either Stiles doesn’t notice Brian’s annoyance or he doesn’t care. He keeps at his work, only glancing up at Brian for a second before saying, “Because it’s the only motel in Beacon Hills that isn’t on Hale territory. It’s the only place Hunters that are bad would be willing to stay. The motel is your best option, anyway. No background checks. Ask Derek.”

Sophie frowns. “Not Scott?”

Scott would definitely be able to tell Brian where he should work.

Stiles sighs and he sounds old. Much older than nineteen years old. “Scott doesn’t think about stuff like this.” He winces after he says it, like he didn’t mean too, like this is something that has come up before.

Brian leans back on the barstool and barks out a laugh. “Alpha Scottie doesn’t think about things like this?”

Stiles casts a withering glare at him. “Don’t.”

Brian laughs again. “Trust me, _Draoi_ , I ain’t doin’ anything.”

Sophie hears footsteps make their way up the stairs, heavy and familiar. She rushes to the door before she can hear what Stiles has to say back (which is inevitably something). Derek doesn’t look surprised when she flings the door open.

He looks tired and worn and nice. He’s wearing a suit and tie, but his collar is open and his tie is crooked. He does look mildly surprised that she’s opened the door before he could even get his key out. “Sophie,” he says pulling on his tie more. “Where did you get bacon?”

She smiles and pulls him inside. “Stiles was making it when I woke up.”

Derek frowns, dropping his briefcase by the door and kicking off his shoes as he walks towards the kitchen. “Stiles?”

“Yep,” Brian says, straightening his paper. “Didn’t leave like you told him to.”

Derek sighs long-sufferingly leaning on his palms against the counter, looking at the boy in question. “I told you to leave.”

Stiles arches an eyebrow and shoves a plate loaded with bacon and what Sophie can only assume is scrambled eggs. “I couldn’t let my pups starve, now could I?”

Derek growls but eats his food anyway.

 

 

...

 

Sophie hears Derek talking on the phone around midnight. His voice is soft and tired so she climbs to the edge of the staircase and peeks over to hear him better.

“I just can’t, Stiles,” he said, head resting in his free hand. “And without a permit I wont be able to hire someone to -”

“You should do it yourself,” Stiles voice crackles through the phone speaker and he says more, but it’s quieter and Sophie can’t hear it.

“I can’t,” Derek repeats, this time with more venom. “I can’t tear down my fucking shell of a house. It’s the last thing I have – I don’t –“ his voice breaks and he goes quiet and still. His breath is unsteady, his heart even more so.

She faintly hears Stiles say something.

“I know,” Derek says. He hangs up after that.

It’s the first time she’s ever seen him look defeated.

 

 

...

 

It’s another week before Derek drives them back to his old home. This time, they are accompanied by sledgehammers and pry bars and saws. Derek has worn the mask of determination for three days now. It only slipped once, in the seventh isle of Home Depot, when Brian suggested buying a jackhammer to break the foundation.

Sophie and Brian pull out the tools and Derek just stands there, mallet in his hand.

When all the tools are unloaded, there’s nothing left to do but stand there and wait for Derek’s instructions, but he remains silent, like he doesn’t even remember that they’re even there.

“So,” Brian says after a while. “Why can’t we just hire someone else to do this?”

Derek’s jaw tightens. “It burned down over two years ago,” is all he says.

They stand for well over an hour, Derek’s fists are clenched so tight the handle of his mallet splinters.

It is Brian who finally grips Derek’s shoulder and says. “You’re not going to lose them.”

Derek is angry then. He flies at the wreck of his home and wrenches the door off of its hinges, slams his fists into the wall. He’s nothing but fury and rage and it’s horrifying to see him this way. He drops the mallet and starts to pull at the siding with his bare hands. It breaks off and splinters. Some of it crumbles into ash. His knuckles are bruised and bleeding. He kicks and he pulls.

Glass shatters.

Boards break.

The left half of the front wall tumbles down and the dust and rubble billows up around him. The rumble rattles through the trees and shakes Sophie’s bones. The only thing left standing is the stone support pillar.

Derek tries to break it by slamming at it with all that he has. “This house!” he screams. “This fucking house!”And then he sinks to his knees like a weight that’s been sitting on him for years has suddenly been taken away.

He’s calm when he pick up his hammer, calm when he gently pries off the stairs one by one. He’s back to the Derek that Sophie first met, but if anything he’s more than that now.

“How did you know to say that?” Sophie asks Brian as he picks up a pry bar and hands it to her.

Brian smiles. It’s the first time he’s ever really looked his age. “Derek is one of those idiots who knows that home is where the heart is, but thinks that it’s the pile of bricks commonly referred to as a house.”

That doesn’t really make sense to Sophie. She always thought that Derek smelled like home anyway, but Derek’s heart is now strong and steady, and his smell is cleaner than it was before. She thinks it’s almost like how healing smells.

“C’mon,” Brian says. “Let’s go help.”

 

 

...

 

Derek gets his building permit three weeks later, after the rubble has been cleared and the space has been made. He pulls the blueprints from the county office and makes a few modifications to the plans. “We’ve got work to do,” he says.

 

 

...

 

Scott and Isaac come and help the framers pull up the walls. It’s a group effort. Melissa pulls up with lemonade as the third wall rises. Derek doesn’t let Brian touch the nail gun.

 

 

...

 

The plumber doesn’t understand why there are so many bathrooms for the four people that will be living in ‘this giant house’. Sophie doesn’t think Derek understands either. “I didn’t notice there were so many,” he admits.

 

 

...

 

One day, when it is just Sophie and Brian and Derek, she hears twigs snap off in the trees. She finds the broken sticks surrounded by decaying leaves and mushrooms. She smells death. She hears whispers.

Sophie does not tell.

 

 

...

 

Derek starts to call people. Sophie doesn’t mind; he sounds happy when he talks.

It’s Brian who gets interested in who exactly is being talked to and has the phone company pull the record. “Look, wolf girl,” he says. “It’s all the places he’s been!”

“That’s really creepy,” she says.

 

 

...

 

The Sheriff is an expert at putting up dry wall, no matter what Stiles says.

 

 

... 

 

 

(“Seriously, Derek, you don’t need seven bedrooms and three multipurpose rooms.”

“I do. You’ll see.”)

 

...

Sophie’s and Brian’s room are across from each other and Derek claims the master bedroom at the end of the hall. Combined they fill up a quarter of the first floor. There’s still the right half of the house and another floor that are empty but the rooms that get used are furnished with hand me downs from the Argents, the Stilinskis and the McCalls.

“Was the house really this big?” Scott asks Derek when they’re all eating pizza on the kitchen floor.

“Bigger actually,” Derek says easily. “Mom would host Pack Meetings sometimes so we needed the room.”

Sophie remembers Petra hosting one. It had been hectic.

Isaac makes a noise of shock. “How many’d be here?”

Derek shrugs. “Maybe fifty.”

 

 

...

 

Sophie and Isaac are exiled from the kitchen and sent to Home Depot because their cabinet wasn’t straight.

“Pick out some paint colors!” Stiles says when he pushes them out the door.

Isaac is quiet the whole drive there. Sophie feels like if she thinks too loud he’ll be able to hear her.

“Does Stiles make eggs for breakfast every morning?” she asks when the quiet becomes too much.

Isaac heaves a breath. “If he’s on one of his health kicks and wants to be an annoying shit, he does.”

Sophie frowns.

“Oh.” Isaac squirms in his seat, mumbles something under his breath and makes an aborted motion in her direction. “I mean, if you ask him to make something else, he will. You just gotta tell him.”

“Oh,” Sophie echos.

Discussing colors is a little easier. Sophie is amazed at the wall of little squares of colors. They’re organized in a way that she’s never seen before.

“Can we get all of them?” she asks. I

saac pushes his hands into his pockets with a small smile on his face. “Derek said ten.”

“Stiles said fifteen,” she contends and that pulls a laugh out of him. “What’s your favorite color?”

Isaac scans the wall of samples quickly and pulls out a yellow that reminds Sophie of mountain ridges bathed in sunlight. “This one,” he says, flipping the card over. “Uh, Sunshine Soak?”

“They name the colors?”

“Yeah. Really fuckin’ stupid names, too.” He pulls out a blue grey. “Like this one is Full Moon,” he points to another. “And that’s Angel Wings.” Sophie has to stand on her toes to see the colors in his hands.

“Those are nice colors.”

“Yeah?” Isaac pulls another pale color from the wall. “What about this one? Shale Grey?”

“Derek would like that color,” she says.

“He would,” Isaac nods. “But what about you?”

It takes Sophie a while to settle on one. By the time she’s finished, Isaac already has samples bought and brushes in the cart.

“This one,” she says, holding up the card.

Isaac frowns at it. “Brown?”

Sophie frowns at him. “Not just brown,”

“Looks like ‘just brown’ to me.” He crosses his arms. “What’s it called?”

She feels heat creeping up her neck, the shift thrumming through her veins. Embarrassment was always hard for her to control. “I don’t know.”

Isaac doesn’t notice. “The name’s on the back. Just read it.”

She clenches her jaw and doesn’t even bother looking at the scribbles on the back of the card.

“Can’t you read?” Isaac continues, far to loud and far to arrogant. Far to much like Petra's mate.

She can’t help the growl that tears out of her throat. She scares herself and backs into the gallon cans of paint. “I’m sorry,” she says, foot catching on the bottom shelf and pulling her down. “I didn’t – “ She tries to speak but her voice gets stuck in her throat. She feels her ribs stretch and her spine moves and she can’t stop the shift—

Isaac presses his hand on her shoulder. He looks around their isle before flashing amber eyes at her. “This is a really bad spot to do that,” he says. His hand his heavy and burning on her skin. She doesn’t like it. She wants to get as far away from him as she can. “Jesus!” he huffs when she jerks away from him. “Just calm down!”

She doesn’t.

 

 

...

 

Derek doesn’t really say anything when Isaac finishes telling him why they came back in a rush and angry.

Sophie doesn’t even bother trying to speak and rushes to her room clawing off her clothes. As soon as she shuts the door she’s lost and dropping to all fours and _howling_ as loud as she can.

For the first time, the shift brings her comfort.

Derek comes in a few minutes later and sits on her bed. He holds a shirt out to her but she shakes her head and paces away. Derek sighs. Rubs his face. “You don’t need to be afraid of Isaac,” he says.

She growls.

“You don’t need to be afraid of anyone here,” he continues.“We all…” Derek shakes his head and doesn’t go on.

He seems so sad and she can’t stand it. Sophie pushes through her shift. Her skin itches. She feels to small for her body.

“He reminded me of someone,” she says, pulling the shirt out of his hand and resting her forehead on his knee while she tugs it on.

“In your old pack?”

“Yes.” 

Derek cards a hand through her hair. “We aren’t them.”

She knows.

 

 

...

 

Isaac apologizes for ‘being an ass’ a few days later, but he does it with pink ears and his hands shoved in his pockets and with a constant eye to the kitchen door where Stiles is peaking around the corner.

 

 

...

 

 

(“Never piss off a Draoi,” Brian says.

“What the fuck do you keep calling me that for?” Stiles says.) 

 

...

Stiles suggests they create a friendship garden and Isaac looks disgusted but agrees to it when sparks crackle around Stiles’ fist.

 Isaac’s favorite flowers are daisies.

 (Sophie likes them, too.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow this took forever i am so so sorry (this is like the first long thing i've ever written and lemme tell you it's difficult for me) sorry also for any typos


	3. Act III - Healing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So, Sophie,” Scott says, snagging some bacon from her plate as she sits next to him. “You like to run?”
> 
> She nods.
> 
> Scott grins. “Fast?”
> 
> She nods again. There’s nothing quite like flying through the woods with nothing but your breath and your heartbeat to keep you company.

"What is dark within me, illumine." 

...

 

She is running. Running. Running. Running through leaves and tree trunks and branches. They claw at her – pale and human – cut thin red lines into her skin.

A tree moves, grabs her shoulder. She feels the thorns dig into skin, feels the weight crush her bones.

 _It’s your fault_ , the tree says. Its voice pinpricks at the base of her skull and vibrates down her spine. _You lead it here!_

_You lead it here!_

_You lead it here,_  Derek says. They are standing at a cliff. One of his hands is balled into a fist. His claws cut into his palm. His other hand is tangled in the collar of her shirt. He’s holding her over the edge. _So you’ll lead it away_.

She is falling. Falling. Falling. Falling through briars and thorns and talons. They rip at her – fur - coated and snarling – tear her inside out. She lands on a stump, jars her joints when she lands. She feels the bite of the bark on her paws, feels the magic that’s thrumming from the stump.

 _Sophia_ , says the darkness behind her. Its voice hits her hard in the stomach, ties it into knots, makes it roll.  _I do like your courage_.

She turns, growling at the darkness. The monster blooms from the shadows, billowing out like death and pain, bringing the smell of decay and rot with him. He lifts up a clawed hand.

He smiles, rows of pointed teeth stained with blood. _I think I’ll eat your heart_.

She is screaming. Screaming. Screaming and flailing and lashing out within the confines of strong arms that hold her.

“Sophie!” Derek says, voice in her ear, the most comforting thing she has ever heard. “Sophie, you’re all right. It’s alright!”

Her screaming has torn at her throat and when she speaks she can barely get the words out. “He’s coming,” she says, frantically. Her words feel thick and heavy. She feels the burn of tears in her eyes. “You have to go! You have-“

“No one’s coming, Soph,” Derek says. He even takes the time to listen, to make sure his words are true. His arms tighten around her. She’s completely pressed up against his chest. She can hear his heart beat, steady and calm and loud and more than anything she wants it to stay that way.

“He is,” she bites out. “I can feel it.”

“He’s not,” Derek bites back. He doesn’t even know who she’s talking about, the danger that she means, but his conviction is so strong that she can’t help but to believe him. “And if he does, he won’t hurt you, I swear.”

He stays with her until she falls back to sleep. He is still there when she wakes up later that morning.

…

 

The whole pack minus Melissa is there when she and Derek stumble into the kitchen, and though Sheriff is walking out the door, he pauses to ruffle her hair and pat Derek’s shoulder before he leaves. Brian is perched on a bar stool next to Isaac and they’re both watching Lydia, who is manning a pan over the stove, like hawks.

Lydia and Stiles cook very differently. Stiles is all over the place where Lydia is precise and technical.

Stiles jumps up from the table that sits in the nook and presses a plate of bacon into Sophie’s hands. “Almost couldn’t stop Scottie from eating it all,” he winks at her.

Scott smiles from his seat at the table and waves her closer. “C’mon, Soph!” he says. “You can’t eat all that bacon. You gotta save room for pancakes.”

“Pancakes?” she asks and Stiles snorts.

She feels Stiles move closer to Derek and almost doesn’t hear him say, “The Nemeton’s awake again.”

If anyone else hears him, they don’t act like it. Derek is so quiet in his response that Sophie can’t catch it and Scott’s still waving her over. She feels stretched thin after her dream this morning.

“So, Sophie,” Scott says, snagging some bacon from her plate as she sits next to him. “You like to run?”

She nods.

Scott grins. “Fast?”

She nods again. There’s nothing quite like flying through the woods with nothing but your breath and your heartbeat to keep you company.

“Human or wolf?”

Sophie blinks at him.

Surprise and dread swirl in her stomach.

“Derek told me ‘bout you,” Scott continues. He doesn’t seem too concerned.

Sophie looks back at Derek anyway. He’s not paying attention. He and Stiles are still talking and they both looked worried.

“I don’t mind, really. You know, don’t ask don’t tell, but it’s pretty cool that you can shift all the way.” Scott is still grinning. The sunlight that’s filtering through the nook windows make him look like he’s glowing.

She swallows and takes a shaky breath. “Cool?”

“Yeah! Man, I bet your family was proud of you for being able to shift like that. Derek said only strong wolves could do it. Like his mom.”

Sophie shakes her head. Talking about her old pack still makes her uneasy. “They weren’t.”

Scott frowns. “Weren’t proud?”

Sophie shakes her head again.

Scott looks sad, and then very determined. For a second his eyes flash a brilliant ruby red, and the color doesn’t scare her quite like it did in the past. He stands, pulling her up with him. His chair screeches back against the wood floor.

Everyone turns to glare except Brian, who sing-songs: “That’s mahogany!”

Isaac shoves his shoulder.

“Me ‘n Sophie are going for a run!” Scott announces. They’re running before they even clear the front door.

…

 

She tells Scott all she knows about what she is. Tells him how she grew up, always a wolf. How she was born a cub and raised like an animal. Tells him how everything she knows is from her younger brother, Sebastian. Tells him that her anchor is family.

That she never had one quite like the one she has now.

She even tells him the legend of the first wolves.

“At first there were just humans,” she says. “But the witch queen cursed the people of the trees and they turned into monsters. Seb called them Olcs. But then the witch queen’s sister weakened the curse and they turned into wolves instead.”

“During full moons?” Scott asks, genuinely interested.

“All the time.” Sophie shakes her head. “They were always wolves. Like me.”

“But you can turn human.”

“I have an anchor,” she hold her hand over her heart. “In the past they didn’t. Eventually the curse started to fade away and they only turned to half-wolves when the moon is ripe.”

“Like me!” Scott smiles. “Do I get a fancy name?”

Sophie laughs. “Faolcúan. I don’t know what it means, though.”

“Stiles might.” Scott is easy to talk too. Much easier than Petra ever was. She is happy to call him her Alpha. “But, wait, if the curse is wearing off why do some still turn into wolves completely?”

She shrugs. “Magic is strange. It comes and goes in waves.”

Scott sighs like it answers everything. “What’d you call magic? Dru… dru-yacht?”

“Draoidheachd.”

“Yeah, that! That’s cool.”

She doesn’t know how much of the story is true, but it’s what she’s always been told.

…

 

A few weeks later a routine has been set up. Derek, Sophie and Brian continue to work on the house. There’s not much left to do, but the size of it all is rather daunting. Sophie and Brian paint the upstairs and sometimes help Derek in the yard. Sometimes she and Isaac will work in their garden.

It’s full force now with everything from flowers to vegetables and Stiles put in a few words about some herbs that he’d like. There’s even a Wolfsbane plant shoved into the corner, but only Stiles can touch that. In the summer Isaac wants to plant mini watermelons.

On the weekends when Stiles and Lydia and Allison come home from the closest community college (which is only two hours away and not a hard trip at all) they all work together to put together furniture.

The wrap around couch in the den took two weekends, but then again none of the instructions were in English and werewolves aren’t particularly patient.

(“What do you mean it’s not in English? Derek, look they’ve even drawn it out!”

“All I see are pictures and the pictures do not make sense.”

“What the fuck is a Karlstad anyway?”)

During the week Sophie and Derek will run in the mornings. Scott, Isaac and Brian will run later, in the night before Scott and Isaac’s shift starts at Deaton’s and after Brian gets back from the motel.

Derek will lead her to the creek, and he’ll tell her little stories about his family. Show her where he played with Laura and Cora when they were little. He seems happy to talk about it. Normally the woods smell clean and fresh, like it’s just rained and everything has been washed.

Today there is a new scent in the woods. Derek’s eyes flash blue as he growls out, “Intruder.”

And then they both track the stranger down.

They find him holed up in a small cavern in between a fallen pine and an old oak. He’s dirty and scared and it sounds like he hasn’t eaten in days. Derek spends thirty minutes trying to coax him out from amid the trees. When the boy finally immerges, Derek crouches in front of him.

Sophie watches as the black veins of pain spiral down Derek’s arms. There’s pressure building at the base of Sophie’s skull. She feels like they're being watched.

“What’s wrong?” Derek asks. “Where are you hurt?”

The boy lifts up his torn shirt and shows them his side. It’s not too bad, just a scrape, but it hasn’t been taken care of and it looks infected.

Derek looks at Sophie like she needs to say something so she says the first thing that comes to her mind. “We’ll get you fixed up in no time.”

The boy frowns at her. “Where?”

Derek smiles and it’s small but it’s genuine. “Hale house.”

…

 

“My name’s Ed,” says the boy as he shovels food into his mouth. Stiles starts to make another grilled cheese. Ed has already eaten five. “I’m twelve. I’m from up north.”

“What?” Stiles says. “We talkin’ Oregon or Washington?”

“Washington,” Ed says after he downs his seventh glass of milk. Sophie is about to pour him another one when Derek snatches the glass away and fills it with water instead. “Forks, Washington. Home of Pack O’Hare.”

The pan clatters against the stove. Stiles is staring at Ed like he’s grown another head.

“ _Forks?_ You’ve got to be kidding me.”

…

 

Derek makes the call up to Pack O’Hare, but it’s Scott that actually has to talk to the Alpha. By the time he’s off the phone he’s shaking with rage and his eyes keep flashing red.

“He’s not going back there,” Scott tells Derek. “He’s not! It’s worse than Isaac’s dad. I’m not gonna knowingly send him back, werewolf or not!”

…

 

Stiles comes back home the next weekend with a box that sticks five feet out of the back of his Jeep. No one is more excited about it than Ed because it’s, in fact, for him.

(“I’ve haven’t gotten a gift in forever!”

“Well, kid, no time like the present.”)

Ed’s joy is contagious as he rips into the box. “A bed!” he crows, when the cardboard box has been completely ripped away. He pauses for a second, squinting at the pile of dismantled bed. “A bunk bed?”

Derek snorts from his spot on the couch like someone’s just told him an inside joke.

Sophie frowns at him and he shrugs. “Stiles thinks were gonna keep picking up strays,” he says.

All around the pack is happy. They’re all smiling. All family.

“And we might,” Derek continues. “If they keep coming, we’ll keep taking them in.”

He and Scott share a look and Sophie realizes that for all intents and purposes Scott is the Alpha of Pack Hale, but it’s still called Pack Hale for a reason.

…

 

The only problem with not sending Ed back to Pack O’Hare is that Alpha O’Hare wants Ed back. Scott is adamant but Pack O’Hare, according to Derek, is powerful. And vicious.

“They’ll come here and tear us apart, Scott,” Derek is saying when Sophie and Isaac come in from tending their garden. Isaac wipes a dirty finger across her nose and she pushes him across the kitchen. “O’Hare wasn’t a friend to my mother. There’s literally nothing holding him back.”

“But it’s wrong,” Scott protests. He and Derek are in the Den but they’re loud enough to be heard over the whole house. Isaac holds his finger to his lips and points down the hall. Ed is crouched at the door to the den. He’s peaking around to watch Scott. “I’m not gonna send a kid back to where I know he’ll be hurt again.”

“O’Hare thinks it’s because you want another Beta and that’s the only way he’ll see it. You’re a young Alpha with a small pack. That’s the only way anyone is gonna see it, Scott.”

“I was a human before I was a werewolf,” Scott growls. “I’m still a person either way.”

Ed folds in on himself and presses his hands to his ears. Isaac is next to him immediately, scoops him up and brings him back to the kitchen. Isaac drops the boy rather unceremoniously on the kitchen counter.

Ed is crying. Not loudly, but just enough to make his face twist into something that looks painful and he’s making these small hiccupping noises. He’s scared. Sophie can smell it rolling off of him.

“It’s okay,” she finds herself saying. She reaches out and rubs his shoulder. He leans into her touch.

Isaac is glaring at the den with his hands shoved into his pockets.

“No,” Ed shakes his head and rubs at his face harshly. “No it’s not. O’Hare’ll come and kill everybody that’ll stand up to him. S’what he did to my first pack. He’ll do it here too.”

“We wont let that happen,” Isaac says. His voice is like steel. “Scott wont let that happen.”

…

 

Isaac sleeps on the bottom half of Ed’s bunk that night. And when they blunder down the stairs the next morning Ed is smiling again.

…

 

There’s not really much Sheriff can do. He tried to call up to Forks and let them know of a possible abuse situation, but the sheriff there laughed it off saying, “If my Alpha hurts anyone, they deserve it.”

And that had made Sheriff as mad as Scott.

Stiles and Lydia spend their next weekend home setting up a Wolfsbane border around Hale territory. Allison and her father equip the house with a Hunter worthy security system.

And Derek makes a call. Just one – to an Alpha in Sioux Falls. It had been short and curt and ended with an “I’ll see you soon, then.”

…

 

The Sioux Falls Alpha, Eyota, is a tall and formidable man. He brings his first Beta, Mato, who is even bigger and doesn’t turn into a wolf, as his Pack would suggest, but a bear.

“Mato came to the world as a cub,” Eyota tells Scott. His voice is so deep it rumbles down Sophie’s spine. “Most would fear such a child. But my people are brave and he is a good man and has won the fight with his spirit.”

“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” Derek says, extending his hand to the Alpha.

“The cause was worthy,” the Alpha dismisses. He takes Derek’s hand and shakes it warmly. “Pack Hale has always been a one of justice. O’Hare lets his wolf win.”

…

 

Alpha O’Hare doesn’t quite know what to do when he see’s Eyota and Mato standing behind Scott.

Derek puts himself between Sophie and the visitor without thought. Ed clings to her leg and his claws dig slightly into her arm, but she knows how fear sits in a heart and she doesn’t mind. His grip loosens slightly when Isaac presses a hand to Ed’s shoulder.

In the end, as it always is and always was with Petra, Scott and Eyota threaten O’Hare away after he promises to not step foot on Hale territory again.

The whole time Mato stands as a giant black bear with blue eyes, bares his terrible teeth and slashes at the air with his terrible claws.

It makes Sophie sick. She remembers doing the same to people begging for help.

…

 

She sits next to Scott on the porch. Isaac and Ed and Stiles are chasing fireflies around the yard. Derek and Eyota are talking in the Den. She can hear the deep rumble of their voices from where she is.

“You wouldn’t make me do that, would you?” she asks, not strong enough to will herself to meet Scott’s gaze.

“Do what?”

“Scare people?” She grabs at her hair and pulls. “As a wolf?”

“No,” Scott says immediately. “Never.”

…

 

Ed goes back to Sioux Falls with Eyota. Mato lets him ride on his shoulders.

…

 

Stiles asks for his bat to be handed to him, even though it’s only three feet away from where he’s lying on the ground. Training days are always rough. Sophie doesn’t think anything of how no one moves to grab it.

When her hand closes around the handle pain zips up her arm. Black splotches appear soon after and before she can blink her arm’s been infected with Wolfsbane. Stiles jerks the bat out of her hand quickly and Derek is pressing the antidote to her wound in less than thirty seconds.

It doesn’t really matter, though; the damage has been done. Wolfsbane poison smells like acrid decay. Smells like your flesh is dead and moments away from falling off your bones. Smells like the monster that killed her family.

She can’t help but jerk away from Stiles when he reaches out to her.

“I was just kidding, Sophie,” he says. “You didn’t have to get it for me.”

“Don’t ever touch his bat again,” Derek growls into her ear. She can tell that he’s not really angry with her but angry that it happened. It doesn’t change how it makes her stomach roll and her wolf claw at her insides. “It’s magic.”

“I know what it is,” she growls back before she can think. “I could recognize that fucking smell anywhere.”

Stiles freezes where he is and looks at her in amazement. Derek’s grip on her arm tightens for a second and then he’s pulling away like he’s been burned.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

…

 

The pack gives her wary looks when she walks through the house to she goes out to the garden and sits among the flowers. She thinks on the times when her old pack wouldn’t even bother looking her way. She’s tired of being quiet. Tired of trying to please everyone by not being who she really is.

And she’s finally sure of who she is.

She decides it’s better to be noticed and mistrusted than ignored altogether.

Derek said he would help her control her wolf, but Sophie doesn’t think it can be tamed. It was all she knew growing up, yes, but it was still caged in by her mother, treated more like a pet than a daughter. At least Scott lets her run free.

“Your mom hurt you, didn’t she?” Isaac startles her out of her thinking. He’s sitting next to her, legs pulled up so his elbows can rest on his knees.

“My mother loved me,” she says, mostly because it’s what her mother always told her to say, but her heart stammers and her jaw clenches around the words.

Isaac nods. “My dad loved me, too,” he says, not looking at her. His heartbeat is rapid. “But he still hurt me.”

Isaac’s words twist her heart. She wants to say something but words get lost in her throat.

“He’d lock me in a freezer if I made him mad,” he continues. “I dunno why. Don’t really want to know.”

Sophie nods. She knows the feeling. “My mother would chain me up like a dog.”

Isaac makes a noise in the back of his throat. It’s something between disgust and shock and understanding. He pushes a hand through his hair and fiddles with the dirt around a flower with the other. “Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll end up like him. And when I get hurt, I’m afraid that I’ll-“

“Hurt them back.”

Isaac nods. “Yeah.”

Sophie leans against his shoulder. “When I hurt someone, even if it’s an accident, I’m afraid that I’ve done it on purpose. Like I wanted to hurt them.”

“I doubt you do.”

“I’m still afraid.”

Isaac pushes her off of his shoulder and moves so he’s facing her directly. “When I get afraid I think of my family.”

“Your father?”

Isaac smiles something small and sad, shakes his head and looks down. “Nah, this one. The pack. They’re my family. I'm better than I was. They’ve healed me.”

“They have,” Sophie agrees. “I can smell it.”

Isaac looks at her, self-conscious. “You can?”

He shifts slightly and she’s suddenly very aware of how his hands are on either side of her legs and how he’s slightly leaning over her.

“I like it. It smells clean,” she says. “Like rain water and green meadows and family.”

Isaac looks impressed for a second before he swoops forward and presses his nose into crook of her neck and breathes deep. “You smell like that too, you know,” he says quietly.

…

 

Derek spends dinner glaring daggers at Isaac, whose neck is flushed bright pink.

…

 

Stiles takes it upon himself to teach Sophie how to read and write. He brings home piles of children’s books and lesson sheets.

By the end of the first week Sophie can scratch out her name and she is beyond proud of herself.

“Mom would have never let me learn this!” she tells Stiles as he writes ‘Hale’ on the top of the paper so she can write it below. She wants to learn how to write everyone’s names. “Thank you so much, Stiles!”

…

 

She runs up to Derek the second he comes home from his new job at the mechanic shop and thrusts a piece of paper into his hands.

“What’s this?” he asks as he unfolds it.

“My name!” she says brightly. “Stiles taught me!”

Derek frowns at the page for a second before he looks at her concerned. “Sophie, your na-“

“It is!” she blurts. “That’s my name now. Sheriff helped me change it a few weeks ago and the letter came this morning.”

Derek still looks concerned even though he pulls her into a hug and squeezes hard enough to pop her back.

The page flutters down to the porch floor, ‘Sophia Hale’ scrawled messily on its face.

…

 

She is running again. Running. Running. Running. She can hear him behind her, stick breaking underfoot, trees groaning as his claws tear at their bark. She can hear his laugh, deep and dark and cold among the trees.

 _Sophia_ , he says. _I need a heart like yours. Strong. Wild._

She trips on a tree stump. Fireflies explode from it and the trees start screaming. Their noise drowns out all other sound.

_It’s hot. The forest is hot! It’s on fire. The forest is too hot!_

_You can’t run from me, Sophia_ , the monster says, pushing a clawed hand against her throat and tearing open her chest with the other. It takes everything she has to drag in her breath.  _No wolf can run from me._

She uses her last breath to scream.

“Sophie!” Derek yells. "Wake up!" His arms wrap around her and he holds her to his chest.

She cries.

…

 

It’s taken almost a year, but finally the Hale House renovations are finished. It’s a strange sight to see a grill being pulled behind Sheriff’s car, but Stiles had insisted that the best way to celebrate a new house was a barbeque to show off said house.

Of course, Derek only invites the pack so the point is moot.

Sophie helps Derek put up lanterns around the back yard and Stiles is pestered by Brian and Isaac in the kitchen.

Lydia pulls up two hours before she’s supposed too and pulls out three boxes of decorations and pulls everyone who isn’t doing anything (which is everyone, excluding Stiles and Melissa) to help her decorate.

Derek makes a point to look annoyed but sometimes Sophie looks at him and sees a wide smile on his face.

Sheriff’s grill is big enough to hold a whole pig and Derek is wolf enough to get one. By the time it’s time to eat the meat is falling off the bone and all the wolves become snarly at the prospect of a lot of food.

It’s nothing like dinners at her old home. The only big feasts had been during meetings with other packs. They had been quiet and formal and tense. But tonight is loud and joyful and alive.

Allison and her father even show for a little while, but they don’t stay because the occasion is for pack bonding even if no one admits it. They eat the food, and Derek shows them the house. Chris Argent leaves a silver coin above the front door in a show of solidarity.

It’s so hectic that Sophie ignores the scream she hears from the woods. Blows it off as her imagination.

But then she hears it again. And Scott stiffens where he sits and suddenly everyone is still and quiet and listening.

Lydia gasps, suddenly. “A kid,” she says, grabbing at Stiles’ sleeve. “Do you feel it?”

Stiles nods; his expression is pained. “Scott, the Nemeton.”

Scott growls. “Derek, Isaac,” he says. “Go east, to the border. Me and Brian will go west. Meet in the middle.”

Derek nods once, and then they’re all gone.

Lydia takes a shaky breath. “Stiles, there’s a kid out there.”

“I know,” Stiles grits his teeth, bouncing on his toes. “I know.”

Sophie feels uneasy. She feels like should be out there with her Alpha. So she runs. Bolts into the trees before Stiles can stop her.

She strips as she runs and by the time she hits the tree line she sprouts her fur and howls loudly.

A deep growl that echoes through the trees answers her. She knows that growl. Knows the monster it belongs to.

Her legs lock up and she stumbles, fear lacing through her veins like fire.

She hits the ground and rolls, fully human and completely vulnerable.

“Mia,” she hears the hushed whisper close by. “Mia, aquí!”

Sophie pushes herself up from the ground. Footsteps trail to where she is. A boy pushes through the brush and pulls a little girl behind him. He meets Sophie’s gaze and relief floods his face.

“Help us,” he gasps. “Por favor – please! There’s a-a monstruo!”

“A monster?”

“Sí!” the boy is hurt. His arm glints red in the moonlight and his eyes are bright amber. “Por favor, mi hermana, my sister is human.”

The monster growls again, Sophie hears Scott growl back. She knows that Scott will do whatever he can to protect his pack.

The girl whimpers, crowding closer to her brother.

She hears Derek crashing through the trees. He’s next to her in seconds and lifting the little girl into his arms.

“C’mon,” he says. “Let’s get them to the house.”

…

 

The boy’s name is Hugo and his sister is Mia. They come from Mexico City. They have nowhere else to go except the place they ran from, so Scott lets them stay. Hale House gains two new occupants. Pack Hale, two new members.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ooh man im finally getting to the good stuff


	4. Act IV - Growing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So it’s something supernatural,” Sheriff sighs wearily. Sophie feels like his badge must bear a heavy weight. “I thought we had shut off the tree.”
> 
> Stiles looks down. “Magic doesn’t work like that. Sometimes it surges. Like waves.”
> 
> “Well,” says Sheriff, stepping back out the door. “Keep these kids safe. I’ll spin it as an animal attack.”
> 
> Scott throws an arm around Stiles’ shoulder. “Just like old times, huh?”

_"Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep."_

 

Hugo and Mia fit seamlessly into life with Pack Hale. Mia is quick to pick up the simpler parts of English and Lydia (and Derek, surprisingly) is always there to help her when she gets confused.

(“You know Spanish?”

“I know lots of things, Stilinski.”)

Mia is five anyway and, according to Sheriff, Stiles’ English was about the same when he was that age.

Hugo is fourteen and puberty stricken. He and Brian get along famously after Hugo shouts: “Hey! Be a man!” after Sophie punches Brian in the arm during training.

Hugo had then winked at her and Isaac growled threateningly.

Mia loves Scott. Stiles says that she must think the sun shines out of his ass. She’ll follow him around like a duckling and stand next to wherever he sits until he pulls her into his lap. Of course, Hugo glares at Scott the whole time.

“It’s like watching a mini you and Derek,” Isaac tells Sophie one day.

Scott is teaching Mia how to play Mario Kart. They’re both sitting on the floor with Stiles who is their dutiful opponent. Sophie and Isaac are both on the giant wrap around couch that took two weeks to put together. Isaac’s arm is wrapped around her.

It’s a new thing, Isaac’s closeness. She’s not quite used to it – doesn’t understand how it comes so easily to him, how he’s always got an arm around Scott, always knocking shoulders with Stiles or Derek, always greets people with a touch of some kind, be it a handshake or a hug or a punch in the arm.

It isn't just Isaac. Everyone in Pack Hale is just as close, just as tactile.

She doesn't remember her family being this way, not to each other, certainly not to her. Sophie had thought that the constant touch of pack would be suffocating, especially with her wolf not being used to it, but it isn’t.

Ed from Washington had welcomed it. Mato, too, even though he had his own pack. And Hugo and Mia don’t seem to mind.

It makes her wonder. It’s not the first time she’s thought that maybe her family, her old pack, was off in some way.

“I didn’t follow Derek around,” she defends herself, ignoring the sound of Isaac’s heartbeat in her ears.

He laughs. The hand he has slung around her shoulders curls inward and he drags his knuckles across her skin. “You did. It was funny.”

…

Surprisingly, it’s Deaton that manages to get the two into school.

Mia has to wait until next year when she’ll start first grade, but Hugo is shoved with some grumbling into the last semester of eighth grade at the ever-prestigious Beacon Hills Middle School.

“How’d you get them in?” Sheriff had asked, scowling at the vet in disbelief. “They’re not even legal.”

But, true to what all Sophie has heard of Deaton, he had deflected saying, “And yet you’re doing nothing of their presence, Sheriff Stilinski.”

Derek ends up taking Hugo to school every morning, but he rides the bus back to the house.

One day the boy comes home and glowers at Derek.

“You used to have a Camaro,” he accuses, dropping his book bag by the door. Sophie hears it thump on the floor, and then Hugo charging Derek until they’re standing in the kitchen door.

Derek frowns, “How’d you-“

“Some gringo,” Hugo fumes, “said that you traded in for a dad-mobile when you ‘went gay’!”

Stiles and Sophie have a clear vantage point from where they work in the kitchen (he’s teaching her how to make his mother’s perfect vodka sauce for spaghetti) and at that, Stiles laughs so hard he crumples down to the floor, dropping the spoon and wiping tears from his eyes.

“The Toyota is more useful,” Derek argues, voice a little high, which sends Stiles into more peals of laughter and makes Sophie giggle.

“But the Camaro was sexy!” Hugo retorts. “Or do you want to look like a mid life crisis dad?”

Stiles leans up from where he’s sitting on the floor, back against the cabinets, and pulls on Sophie’s arm. He’s still laughing with wide eyes. For a second Sophie almost jerks away from him. Stiles eyes are bright, like light and joy are literally shining right out of them. His grip on her wrist makes her whole arm tingle and she’s so caught up in how magic is sparking out of him she almost misses it when he asks:

“Can Derek join the Hot Dad Club?”

…

It turns out that Derek is right. The Toyota is proves to be more useful that the Camaro would have been, especially when the pack of now eleven members suddenly gains five more from Texas.

“We heard ‘bout you,” says Natasha, a sixteen year old from San Antonio. “Ben Crawford said you’d be a home for us. At least for a little.”

Which to Scott means more bunk beds.

Derek sends Stiles and Isaac out for two, but they come back with eight. They manage to cram three beds into each of the biggest bedrooms left upstairs.

Hugo and Mia share their own room because Scott insists.

…

Stiles and Melissa team up against Derek by going to Scott first about starting a wall of fame. Not only can Scott not say no to his mother, but also Stiles is and always will be his best friend.

And, of course, Derek can’t exactly say no to his Alpha – certainly not in the middle of a pack meeting.

But then, Pack Hale is something of an oddity.

Sometimes Scott comes to Sophie for advice and it makes her nervous.

They’re really only asking out of courtesy. It is Derek’s house after all.

“It’ll go from the door to the kitchen and then stretch up that empty space on the stairs,” Stiles says, excited and eyes gleaming.

Derek deflates, looking over to Scott. “Do you think it’ll take up that much space?”

Scott shrugs. “It might.”

Melissa smiles at them and lifts her camera. “With all the kids that have already come through, we have a lot of work to catch up. Especially since they don’t seem to stop coming.”

Derek makes a humming noise and clenches his fists. Sophie recognizes it as discomfort and unease, but she can’t understand why the prospect of helping more people would make Derek feel that way.

“I’m for it,” says Isaac from where he sits on the floor, leaning back against Sophie’s knees. Hugo nods stoically. Scott snorts.

“I think it’s a good idea,” Lydia voices from the couch. “One picture of every person that comes through.”

Stiles nods dramatically with a wide smile on his face. “It’ll help us keep track of them, too. C’mon Der, please.”

Derek sighs again, bringing one of his hands to the back of his neck. “I guess,” he says.

Melissa and Stiles high-five.

…

Derek pulls Sophie out to the back yard as soon as the meeting is over. He’s tugging his shirt over his head and hopping out of his shoes before they make it out the door.

“Run with me,” he says, already starting to charge across the yard. He shifts in mid-leap, body contorting to shape a large black wolf. While he’s been teaching Sophie to control her shift, he’s somehow learned to control his own.

Scott was probably more excited than any of them about it.

(“But you’re not an alpha anymore! How is that possible?”

“Less about power. More about an anchor.”)

It doesn’t take her long to catch up to him. They run for hours along the territory border and when they finally decide to rest they run into the creek at the back of the preserve.

The lines of tension that had been built up along Derek’s spine ease as he and Sophie lie on the large boulders and let the afternoon sun dry their skin. Midsummer has always been Sophie’s favorite time of year.

“I shouldn’t have run off like that,” Derek says, but it doesn’t sound like he cares all that much. “I was gonna teach Ben how to fly his kite.”

Sophie shrugs, skin scraping against stone. “I was supposed to help Isaac with the sunflowers.”

Derek huffs out a laugh, but rubs his hand across his face roughly. “Thank you for running with me.”

“I’ll always run with you.” She kicks at him, but misses. “You needed it.”

“I did.”

“Does it bother you? All these people coming here?”

Derek makes a noise in the back of his throat, halfway a whine, half a growl. “No, I…” Now both of his hands are covering his face. When he speaks, his words come out muffled. “It reminds me of my family and I- I miss them. Mom would have done a wall of fame. She would have thought of something like that and then Stiles –“ his voice breaks and he lurches up to a sitting position.

Sophie rises with him. “Stiles?”

Derek shakes his head. “He just… I don’t know.” He shakes his head again. “I don’t understand why there are so many kids.” He lifts his face to the sun. “Where are they…? There can’t be that many werewolf kids running around without a pack.”

Sophie bites her lip. “Natasha and Ben came from a pack. Hugo and Mia, too. And I had a pack, but…”

“It’s still too many.” Derek forces out a laugh. “Scott did the math. The house can only hold thirty people max. And there are eighteen now.”

Sophie reaches a hand out to his shoulder. “I feel like we’re doing the right thing.” She ducks her head. “I think you family would be proud.”

Derek finally looks at her then. He’s worn and he’s stressed, but he’s whole and he’s healing. She can see it and she can smell it, just like she can see it in the kids that come and go.

“Yeah?” he hums, eyes soft, heart softer.

She’s about to confirm it, about to tell him exactly how she thinks he’s healing these kids, but the air turns bitter and the sunlight goes dim.

Derek frowns as he breathes in deep. She knows he smells it, the decay and the rot and the death.

“What the hell is that?” he murmurs, rising with his claws out.

Sophie scrambles to stand. She can feel the knots tying in her stomach. She can feel her shift hammering in her veins. The urge is so strong, it’s boiling under her skin. She can see her brother. Feel her mother’s claws dig into her shoulder.

“Sophie,” Derek growls lowly as he jumps down from the boulder. “Go back to the house. Get all the kids inside.”

 _No, no, nonono, he can’t go out there_ – “You come back, too!”

But Derek shakes her head and when he speaks it’s with that power again that Sophie can’t explain. It’s stronger that alpha, stronger than leader. “I have to make sure it’s okay. Go.”

So she runs back to the house, but she makes sure she never stops listening to his heartbeat.

…

The kids don’t want to go inside and Scott and Isaac and Brian are reluctant about it as well, too content to run around and play in the light of the setting sun. But then the stench of it makes it’s way through the trees and the kids file back inside as a darkness settles over the house.

Isaac wraps his arms around her. Scott presses next to Stiles on the couch.

“There’s something out there,” he says quietly, so the kids won’t hear. “Something bad.”

…

Derek comes home in a police uniform that’s a size too big and Stiles laughs until his father walks through the door with a foreboding look on his face.

Sophie hears Scott’s heart skip a beat when Sheriff says that a body has been found in the preserve.

“Don’t let any of the kids wander out there, son,” Sheriff says. “We’re still not sure what’s done this.”

“Could it have been an omega?” Scott asks. He speaks as an alpha and it washes a calm over the room.

Derek nods. “Maybe. But it didn’t smell like one.”

Isaac steps forward. “We could smell it from the house.”

“So it’s something supernatural,” Sheriff sighs wearily. Sophie feels like his badge must bear a heavy weight. “I thought we had shut off the tree.”

Stiles looks down. “Magic doesn’t work like that. Sometimes it surges. Like waves.”

“Well,” says Sheriff, stepping back out the door. “Keep these kids safe. I’ll spin it as an animal attack.”

Scott throws an arm around Stiles’ shoulder. “Just like old times, huh?”

…

Derek makes another call to Eyota, and the old Sioux agrees that strength lies in numbers.

“Mato is coming back,” he tells them at the next pack meeting. “To help us with our guest.”

…

Of course, Isaac tells Sophie later, that ‘old times’ was only a few years ago. Back when Derek came back to Beacon Hills. When Scott was bitten, and Erica and Boyd and Isaac and Jackson.

“But Jackson was scratched,” snorts Stiles as he lifts a wet finger painting off of the table. “Movie in thirty minutes!” he calls through the house and then kids are piling down the stairs like thunder.

Natasha is the only one from Texas to stay and the rest of her group is gone. There are only six kids here now (aside from Hugo, Mia and Nat, who are constants). The oldest is Jack at sixteen and the youngest, besides Mia, is Khadijah at seven (and who is giving Stiles a run for his money as resident prankster).

(“She taped all my books shut and wrapped them in birthday paper!”

“I know I should be mad, Scottie, but that just makes me proud!”

“Stiles!”)

“Who are Erica and Boyd?” Sophie asks.

Isaac rests his forearms on the counter. “Friends in high school. A lot of shit happened in Beacon Hills then. They didn’t…” His jaw clenches and she understands too well.

“How was high school?” Sophie asks in a feeble attempt to change the subject.

“Awful,” Stiles scoffs, and then he glances around the house with a soft smile on his face. “Amazing.”

Isaac grins wryly. “Transformative.” He knocks their shoulders together. “Why, Soph, wanna go?”

Sophie smiles. “I’d like too,” she says honestly. “But-“

“Deaton can probably get you in Hugo’s classes,” Stiles interrupts. “You can read well enough now.”

“But-“

“I think you’d like it,” Isaac says. “Just stay away from sports.”

“Now why should she do that, Lahey?” Brian asks loudly as he strolls into the kitchen.

(Brian did, in fact, get a job at the motel on the outer edge of Beacon Hills. He’s the manager now.)

“Soph would be slammin’ at some b-ball.”

Stiles makes a face. “Dude, you sound so old.”

“I am old,” Brian says morbidly. “Older than you lot. Older than Der-bear.”

Isaac laughs. “Does Derek know you call him that?”

Sophie giggles.

“What do you think?” Brian rolls his eyes and sags against the counter. “I’m thirty, young-uns. Thirty. How time does fly.”

Stiles waves his arms. “Eh, I thought I was old when I turned nineteen, but twenty is way older.”

Isaac nods in agreement and then they all look to Sophie expectantly.

“Well,” Stiles says after a moment. “Bet you haven’t felt old, yet. You’re what? Fourteen?”

Isaac winces. “She’s not that young.”

Sophie frowns. She is right here; they can just ask. “I was nineteen when I met Derek,” she says petulantly. “That was three years ago.”

Of all of them, Stiles looks the most shocked. "But you look like and act like a small child!" he squawks. 

…

When Mato arrives he pick Sophie up in a hug that cracks her back and then before he even talks to anyone else he pulls her away and they run. He manages to find the trail of the creature, but after a mile it vanishes.

The kids love him. They clamber over him and beg him to shift and when he does they all try to ride on his back, even Jack.

Derek even joins the fun and mock fights with the kids and Sophie hears Stiles say that this is probably the closest they’ve ever been to actual wolf pack.

…

Over the course of a month there are three more bodies found. It’s with the second (and a handful of Wolfsbane) that they find all the victims are wolves. All of their hearts are missing.

…

When the house reaches a lull in travelers and the only people living in it are permanent, Natasha asks sweetly and brightly if they can camp out in the back yard.

“I know we can’t go into the woods,” she concedes, “But we’ll be safe in the yard!”

And then she looked at Scott with puppy eyes and he agreed.

That’s how the pack is found hunkered around a small campfire with makeshift tents set up in a circle and Christmas lights strung from tiki torches.

“I wanna tell a scary story,” Natasha declares and Sophie realizes that this is probably the only reason she wanted to camp out in the first place.

“Shoot,” says Stiles as Derek lifts his eyebrows like this is going to be entertaining.

Natasha grins wickedly and settles herself, holding her hand out like she’s about to start some ritual.

“Ooh,” Isaac laughs. “This is gonna be good.”

“Tasha, this better be a good story, now,” Hugo grumbles.

“Shhh!” Natasha glares at all of them. “Ok, ready?”

“Ready!” they chorus.

“A long time ago, when witches walked among the forest,” she begins. “A man came to the forest from his village and he started to cut down the trees.”

“Oh, no!” Mia cries, giggling. “Not the trees!”

Everyone hushes her.

“The witch queen that lived in the woods grew angry at the man,” Natasha continues. “And she cursed him to be like what all men hated…” She looks around at them expectantly. “A wolf.

“The man was so angry at his curse that he ran back to his village and bit all of the people. Some were strong and found their anchors and they became Faolcúan. But some were like the first wolves and found nothing to bind their rage and they became-“

“Faolkyst,” Sophie breathes. She remembers her brother telling this story. She can feel Derek looking at her.

Natasha nods at her. “Right. But there were some who were not strong enough for the wolf, called Olcs, and the curse tore out their hearts. They smell like death. Like decay and pain. Their roar sounds like a demon’s scream. Everything they touch withers away and they never stop searching for the one thing that can make them whole again.”

“Well?” Stiles huffs, when Natasha pauses for effect.

“The heart of a first wolf. Of a Faolkyst.”

Sophie feels her heart stutter in her chest. Her lungs stop taking in air because she knows now why that creature attacked her family, because suddenly it all makes sense.

She pushes herself to her feet and runs back to the house, to her room. When she makes it there, and when she is alone, her wolf tears out of her skin and she cries.

She thought this was over. She had thought that it would have stopped hurting by now.

All she can think of is her family, how they’re gone, how they were killed. If she had just listened to her brother. To her mother. If she hadn’t been born a wolf, they would all still be alive.

Derek is with her in a few minutes, because he always is and she has a feeling he always will be.

When she calms down enough, she tells him everything.

…

_I could go for runs on my birthday. And I was running when I saw him._

_I should have noticed that he smelled like he was already dead, but he was bleeding and he was crying out for help and he was old, so I went over to him._

_When I got close to him, his face turned and his bones moved in his body. He looked wrong. He smelled wrong._

_Like a wolf but not._

_Like the bones of a man just held together by skin._

_He asked for my heart and I ran. He chased me._

_I took the long way home through the river so he’d lose my trail, but when I got home my pack was almost gone and my house was burning._

_I found my brother and kept him safe. When my mother became the alpha, when the Olc had killed everyone else, she took my brother away and left me to die._

_I see him, sometimes. I saw him here. He’s here now. He –_

…

“Wants a heart!” she says frantically.

Derek wraps his arms around her and holds her to his chest. “It’s okay. He won’t get one. Not here.”

And she believes him.

…

Derek tells the pack her story, because when she tries the words get tangled in her throat and refuse to come out straight.

But it’s important that they know, because if the monster in the woods is an Olc, they need to kill it before it kills anyone else.

They listen intently, and hear him out and when it’s all over they are still her pack and she is still their family.

“I’m sorry about your family, Soph,” Stiles says quietly after the rest of them have scattered. “I wish I could do something.”

…

Mato leaves for Sioux Falls the next morning, partially for help and partially to take Hugo, Mia and Natasha to safety.

Mia had cried fat tears and Natasha was grumpy the whole time.

“But we can fight,” she growls at Derek.

“No,” says Scott. “You can’t.”

…

It’s a week later, only a week, when there’s a knock on the door and Sophie’s blood freezes in her veins because there’s no way she couldn’t recognize that smell.

When Scott opens the door, she stands close behind him and when she sees her mother and her brother alive and safe and alive, she falls to her knees.

Her mother cards her fingers through her hair and despite the loving gesture Sophie feels the pinprick of claws across her scalp and she sees the ring of bruises on her brothers arm.

“Sophia,” she says, but her voice sounds like a stranger’s. “I thought I had lost you.” 

Sophie presses her nose to the inside of her mother's wrist and breathes in the sent of her pulsing there. She doesn't know why the urge to be submissive to someone who is not Scott, to someone who hurt her, is so strong. It's like blood is calling to blood.

Her mother smells exactly the same as the last day Sophie saw her. All rage, anger and pain, and little love. There's something off about it, something hidden underneath the familiarity.

"Sophia," she says, eyes sparking red, the edge of them fades to black. Sophie has a distinct feeling that something is wrong. "Why are you pretending to be something you're not?" 

Sebastian's breath shudders in his lungs. Scott's heart is beating strong and steady. Derek's too. Isaac smells somewhat like betrayal, and Stiles, like he is afraid.

 _Of what?_ It's just her mother.

"You're not a person, Sophia," Caterina Salvatore continues. Sophie can't look away from her mother's eyes. "Be who you are. Shift, darling."

Sophie has a split second to think about how she is not an animal, before fur is pushing through her skin and teeth through her gums and her bones move inside her body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is unedited like always (sorry for the typos) and has taken forever and I am incredibly sorry for that. It was particularly frustrating. 
> 
> There are some freakishly similar things happening in season three and this story and that's probably why I'm frustrated. I would just like to say that this whole story was planned out about three months before season three aired and when I saw the Malia Tate episode I went, oh look it's Sophie. 
> 
> NOnE the less, season three is great so far im super lovin' it yawzah!
> 
> next chapter is the last~ thanks for stickin' with it

**Author's Note:**

> So Laura and I created this little Teen Wolf AU and it started with this girl just being part of the pack and it was all very fluffy and then it evolved into this strange werewolf foster home thing and then suddenly words. So blame Laura. 
> 
> The terms Faolcúan and Faolkyst will be explained later (in detail) (it's just it didn't make since for two characters who know what it means to explain it to each other). If not knowing really bothers you, they're basically two different types of werewolves.


End file.
